The Mets have played six games so far this season and Tim Locastro has one start, in which three of his four plate appearances on the year have come. In those 4 PA, Locastro has 3 HBP, which you have to think is some kind of record. Even if somehow it’s not a record, Locastro leads the majors in the category. He has more HBP in 4 PA than 22 teams do! Those 22 teams have between 138 (Nationals) and 208 (Guardians) PA while Locastro is in low single digits.
This is Locastro’s seventh season in the majors but he’s never been a full-time player. His high in PA in a single season is 250, set back in 2019 when he was with the Diamondbacks. Locastro was plunked 22 times that season, giving him an 8.8 HBP%, which is just absurd. In his MLB career, he has 553 PA and 40 HBP, giving him a lifetime 7.2 HBP%. Locastro also has 33 BB in this span, giving him 73 times where he reached base without hitting the ball. That’s a 13.2% of reaching base without making contact, assuming no strikeout wild pitches or passed balls.
It’s a shame he can’t hit, because once he reaches base, he’s a big threat to swipe a bag. In his career, Locastro has been successful on 39 of his 44 attempts, giving him an 89% success rate. Unfortunately, that comes with a .227 lifetime AVG.
Someone teach this man to bunt! It’s tough to find complete information on bunts. Baseball-Reference show he has eight bunts in his career, with two of those being successful sacrifices. He has one bunt hit and one time where he reached on an error. We don’t know if any of the remaining four bunts were unsuccessful sacrifice attempts. Regardless, a guy with his speed and inability to hit should be a master of every bunt you can imagine.
Someone get Frank Taveras on the phone and get him to NY to teach Locastro the fine art of the push-bunt. Click here to see a COTW entry on Taveras, along with a baseball card image of him in action doing his best offensive tool.
We should bunt the crap out of the Brewers.
Where’s Brett Butler (Brett Buntler?) when you need him?
Brett Butler was a fine player and an excellent bunter. The only question is as a LHB, could he teach the righty Locastro the push bunt?
1) I often think of Wednesday comments on Monday and by the time Wednesday rolls around I’ve forgotten what it was. Don’t worry, it will come to me . . . on Friday.
2) My wish was for Baty to be up and for Escobar to revert back to a utility role and for the Mets to move on from Guillorme.
So with the pitch clock being so successful in cutting down game times, mlb should really immediately roll back the other changes like the 3 batter rule and the especially the extra inning free runner rule
+1
Agree 100% on the free runner.
I think you have a point about the 3-batter rule, but since I like it, I’m not at all eager to return to slowing the game down (even marginally) in that particular way, with the return of the LOOGY.
The extra inning rule really has nothing to do with the time of the game; it’s about wear and tear on bullpens, the bad look of position players on the mound, etc. I think the teams like the rule.
Agreed – get rid of the free runner – at least to start the extra innings. Maybe the 10th inning has no runner, the 11th inning has a ghost runner on 1st, and then starting in the 12th the ghost runner can be on 2nd. Or something like that.
From Bill Shea at The Athletic:
T-Mobile formally announced today that it re-upped its sponsorship deal with MLB for 5 years through 2028, and this detail in the press release stuck out: “MLB will test its automated ball-strike (ABS) system over a T-Mobile 5G Private Mobile Network at select MiLB games this season – ensuring ultra-reliable, low latency communications as players and officials review, challenge and analyze calls.”
One small step for man, one giant step for mankind.
The Mets first-round pick in the 1961 Expansion
Draft, Hobie Landrith, passed away on Thursday at age 93